Lionel Messi teases MLS fans, Beckham with hint at future move

Nope. Don’t even start to go there. Lionel Messi almost surely is not coming to Major League Soccer anytime soon. He signed the richest contract in soccer history just a few months ago. He is, until you hear otherwise, a Barcelona lifer.

But “Lionel Messi hints at future MLS move” is a real headline today, because Messi appeared in a fun video on Instagram congratulating David Beckham on the announcement of Beckham’s MLS expansion franchise in Miami. At the end of the video, Messi says, “who knows, in a few years maybe you will give me a call”:

But hey, there’s a non-zero chance that Messi, at some point toward the end of his career, comes to MLS, right?

And Beckham owning a team in Miami, which has one of the largest Spanish-speaking populations in the U.S., can’t be a bad thing as far as Messi-to-MLS prospects are concerned, can it?

There’s virtually no chance of this happening anytime over the next few years. Messi’s salary alone is higher than the payroll of any single MLS team. And his buyout clause is $870 million, which is about 13 times as much as the annual revenue of MLS’s top earning franchise.

And if you want an idea of how serious Messi’s “hint” is, go watch retired Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt tell Beckham in a similar video, “If you need a striker, I’m the guy.”